Tuesday, 7/20/10

Ed Sessa’s New York Times crossword

Has anyone seen a BILLY theme like this before? I like it. BILLY is clued as [Name associated with the starts of 17-, 27-, 48- and 64-Across], and those four answers begin with the last names of famous guys named Billy:

17a. The OCEAN BOTTOM is what they’re talking about when they mention [Davy Jones's locker]. Bily Ocean’s big ’80s hit was “Caribbean Queen.” I went off to YouTube looking for a video to link to here, and boom, it crashed my browser. I never did like that song.

27a. [S'more ingredient] is a GRAHAM CRACKER. A new neighborhood restaurant called Hearty has a great s’mores dessert. Homemade chewy graham crackers, roasted marshmallows, and a molten chili chocolate. Num! Billy Graham was an evangelist.

48a. CRYSTAL PALACE is the [Site of London's Great Exhibition of 1851]. Billy Crystal acts and tells funny stories.

64a. [Veneration of a cult image] is IDOL WORSHIP, and Billy Idol rocked way harder than Billy Ocean. My ’80s music Billy affinities lie firmly in the Idol camp—”White Wedding” and “Dancing With Myself” are damn good songs.

The theme is fun and fresh and it provides a surprising “aha” moment when the seemingly disparate phrases all come together.

What we have here is a before-and-after theme, but Bruce has upped the ante not only by giving us four 15-letter phrases but also by choosing really fresh ones at that. Each of the lively theme phrases is very much in the language and each is making its CS debut. “Grand” is the word that can “open” for the first word in each phrase and here’s how:

17A. (Grand) JURY OF ONE’S PEERS [Equals at a trial]. Love the phrase but only wish the word jury meant something different in each half. Whether it’s a Grand Jury or a jury of one’s peers, we’re still talking about a group of people who are listening to and making a decision about some case. For my money, Bruce is far more successful with the remaining examples.

49A. (Grand) TOTAL COMMITMENT [100% effort and devotion]. Another goodie. It’s clear in this example that in the first instance, total is a noun and an adjective in the second. You’ll see the same noun to adjective transition in

65A. (Grand) MASTER CRAFTSMAN [Very skillful, accomplished worker]. Didn’t know before checking out the meaning that in addition to referring to the heads of some orders (like the Knights Templar…), Grandmaster is a chess term, a title-for-life awarded to selected world-class players.

There are several clues and clue/fill combos that stand out for me as well:

[Green feeling that's not good] is not any variety of mal-de-mer but ENVY. As in “Thou SHALT not covet…” (which demonstrates that [Word in many commandments]).

A [Person of the neighborhood] is the idiomatically-perfect LOCAL.

[Fictional hero Wolfe] is NERO, of course, and if you remember, yesterday’s puzzle prepared us in a timely way with [Stout detective Nero ___ ]. Btw, not only does “Stout” refer to author Rex Stout, but his character is a man of some serious girth, weighing in at more than 280 pounds.

And the sports world gets additional representation by way of DAYGAMES [Some of a baseball team's schedule], [Good score for a duffer] or PAR, and a shout out to (mostly) college football [Coach Amos Alonzo] STAGG. This remarkable man coached well into his 70s and lived to be 102!

Fred Piscop’s Los Angeles Times crossword

I don’t quite get the rationale behind this theme. The theme entries are four songs that include numbers in their titles. Two I’ve never heard of. Two start with the number, two end with it. Three of the four are perfect squares. Two of the four are about food and drink. Three of the four are two-word titles. Why these four songs? What brings them together? Is it nothing more than “you can use ‘number’ in the clue because ‘number’ means ‘song’ and these songs have numbers spelled out as words”? Why not “Eight Days a Week,” “Three Times a Lady,” “Take Five”? There are plenty to choose from. What am I missing?

Here are the theme entries:

17a. [Temptations number] is CLOUD NINE.

64a. [Doris Day number] is TEA FOR TWO.

9d. [Josh White number] is ONE MEATBALL. Who is Josh White?

24d. [Tennessee Ernie Ford number] is SIXTEEN TONS.

Gotta run my kid over to day camp now. Will be back in a while with the Jonesin’ puzzle.

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ crossword, “Last Chance, Harvey”

Matt pays tribute to the late Harvey Pekar with a quote that captures the essence of Harvey. The fourth part of the quote deviates from symmetry, but that’s apt—Pekar tended to carve out his own way in life rather than hewing closely to the accepted rules. If you never saw American Splendor, the live-action movie version of Pekar’s autobiographical comics, do track it down.

It’s apt that this answer is in the middle of the bottom, isn’t it? 57d: ["Terrance and Phillip in Not Without My ___" ("South Park" episode)] clues ANUS. If I recall correctly, the farting Terrance and Phillip were spoofing the Sally Field movie, Not Without My Daughter.

I was hoping this puzzle would have a shout-out to everyone’s favorite pitchman, but I suppose there aren’t any common phrases that start with the word MAYS (are plural forms of months even considered real words?)

Was heading for a PB Tuesday, but got stuck on the last two letters for half a minute… RBS and EHLE mean nothing to me, so I was forced to (shock, horror) work out the theme to solve the puzzle. I think that heightened the “a-ha-ness” of the puzzle, but it’s really unusual and clever variation of the “words that follow” theme.

KLATCH made me think of Terry Pratchett, where it’s a country based somewhat on real-world Arab countries…

@Joon – yes, was going to point out the same thing.

One more thing: I really don’t care for the entry GYP – I’ve seen it before, but I don’t want to ever again. Short for Gypsy and has rather ugly racial connotations.

PS’s: Thank you to those who left kind words yesterday. Also to the best of my knowledge the 42A clue crept in during editing, it’s very weird, but better than ROSA Parks the Civil War hero! I had no idea I was treading on your territory, Joon, I don’t think I was around then!

gareth–it’s not “my territory”! i think i’ve since seen about three puzzles with a birthday theme, and in fact, i’d be shocked if there weren’t dozens around before i made my own (for a friend’s birthday party). anyway, you did a nice job, and if you want to look at my early attempt (from only a bit before i started seeing your name around here) for comparison purposes, feel free.

I thought the crossing in the Jonesis for SKRIBBLE and SHABBA was rather evil. I liked the quote though.
I had the same problem as Gareth in the SE of the NYT with EHLE and RBS, but I think he had more fun with it than I did, I was more annoyed.

Re the LAT: I was also bewildered about the theme. I even tried converting the numbers into letters: AIPB. Nope, that doesn’t mean anything! Has anyone figured this out, or is it nothing more than song titles that have numbers in them?